After more than 90 days of being on paid administrative leave, Cindy Mackin, community engagement director at Visit Estes Park, has decided it’s time to move on, according to Sean Jurgens, VEP board president, who confirmed Mackin has resigned from the organization.
According to Jurgens, Mackin’s resignation is effective Aug. 20.
Mackin’s entire tourism experience has been in Northern Colorado. Since graduating from Colorado State University, she has been involved in destination development, public speaking, grant writing, and event design and production.
Before her employment at Visit Estes Park, which began in April 2024, Mackin was director of Visit Loveland for a dozen years. While there, she received the 2016 Colorado Tourism Office Governor’s Award as an individual contributor to Colorado Tourism. The Public Relations Society of America Colorado Chapter recognized Mackin as its 2018 Business Person of the Year. In 2020, Macin was honored as one of the BizWest Women of Distinction, and in 2016, she received the Certified Destination Management Executive designation through Destinations International, an international trade alliance for destination organizations, convention and visitors bureaus, and tourism boards.
Jurgens said there are no current plans to replace Mackin because a new CEO will make any replacement decision.
Mackin was placed on administrative leave on May 6 due to undisclosed internal issues. Since then, the VEP Board of Directors has hired CPS, a firm specializing in human resources issues, to conduct a workplace investigation.
A company representative met with the board in an executive session during its July 24 meeting. Information about that meeting has not been released.
In January, Mackin was one of two finalists for the CEO position. After 11 months, the board is still looking for someone to lead the organization.
Final interviews for a CEO were conducted on Jan. 30 with a search committee, but the decision-making process hit a roadblock when what has been described as an “unforeseen incident” occurred following those presentations.
At that time, an independent search firm was hired to investigate allegations of since-debunked improper behavior by a candidate from outside Colorado.
Following that investigation, efforts to select a new CEO stalled. In March, the board voted not to move forward with the CEO search at that time. Instead, the board considered hiring Bill Hanbury, a nationally recognized expert in destination marketing organization management, as an interim CEO for six months.
That effort ended when Hanover withdrew his consideration.
His withdrawal followed an April 1 letter by Estes Park Town Trustee Kirby Hazelton requesting that Larimer County commissioners and Estes Park Town Board review VEP operations. Hazelton, the liaison from the Town Board to VEP and a voting member of the board in her role as VEP vice president, asked the two boards to discuss the possibility of removing and replacing all VEP board members and appointing an interim chief executive officer.
Hazelton’s request was met by an open letter from the Visit Estes Park Board defending the organization. The Town Board discussed the problems Hazelton raised, resulting in a joint County-Town meeting where the two boards asked their respective staffs to reconsider details of the intergovernmental agreement. According to Travis Machalek, town administrator, results from that work are anticipated soon.
Since then, SearchWide Global, the executive search firm hired last September to spearhead VEP’s search for a new CEO, has stopped actively seeking new candidates for the organization’s lead position but has continued publicizing the job on its website. Jurgens said the VEP board is now ready to hire a new CEO. If a special meeting cannot be arranged before the Board’s Aug. 28 meeting, the board will discuss the issue during that meeting.